Conference | Vocal Yoga : Bringing the mind into the heart ~ Indica Yoga mars 2023 ~
Conference | Honoring Our Teachers and the Power of Transmission Through Grace and Silence
~ Indica Yoga mai 2023 ~
Western Culture is Turned Towards “Having” or “Becoming”, Indian Tradition is About “Being”
by Varsha Venkataraman July 21, 2021
For Ramatara, her first visit to India was an overwhelming experience. As part of her Yoga course, a batch of students went to India for three weeks. For most of them, it was their first visit to India. They visited ashrams and temples.
Ramatara’s travel was not a smooth ride. She fell sick on the second day in India after a bath in Benares. Although she was sick, she said, “The trip was purifying at both physical and spiritual level. Mentally I was really peaceful but physically completely devastated. The contrast was already a breakthrough.” She made sure that she attended every single ritual and Satsang. She was mesmerised by the devotion in the chants that filled the air. “I was resonating deeply with the devotional vibes you can find at every corner road of India”, she said.
You were drawn to mantras and sound while travelling in India? Can you tell us about the experience and how it shaped your spiritual path?
I heard the first mantras in France. We were having kirtans while studying in our yoga school. It was a beautiful introduction. On the first travel to India, I was completely mesmerized by the chanting of the priests in the temples and devotional kirtans in the ashrams. I was going from ashram to temples and temples to ashrams. It was really meditative and those chantings were bringing inner silence where outwardly it was complete apparent chaos.
Then the next year, while I was working full time for the spiritual center where I was following my yoga training and I was asked to make a documentary for the yoga school on Indian spirituality in the ashrams we were connected with. I went with a group of sadhaka at Chinmaya mission in Mumbai the week before Shivaratri. The whole week was dedicated to the preparation of this special event through teaching and all kind of rituals (puja, yajña, abhisheka, manasa puja etc…). About a hundred Indians were there to attend the camp and thousands came to the Shiva Temple for the night of Shivaratri. The more I was filming the more I was withdrawing in myself. As if the lens of the camera took the whole space of my consciousness. “I” wasn’t filming anymore, the mind was completely quiet, just going with the flow of the rituals, hearing deeply the mantras. That’s where I connected with the sense of inner yajña, where offering made outwardly are really made to the divine withing us. I was that fire, I was the one offering, I was the one receiving, it was pure ananda. Abhishekam was refreshing the lingam of my burning Heart. I understood that what I took as poetry in the scripture, was actually the living experience of the teachers that were expressing it. From that moment I was really drown to devotional practices. Putting down my camera and back home, I was a lot reciting or singing mantras, entering into this devotional path and burning on the fire of Yoga.
